Not My Place
by Amor-deliria-nervosa-7491
Summary: Harlowe Slater's life has never been perfect. But her days are going to get a whole lot worse than not perfect when she questions love, sacrifice, morality, and courage and bravery. This is what motivated her to volunteer for a girl who practically the entire District hates. She knows she won't make it out of the arena. But that doesn't mean she's not going down without a fight.


Pretty much my entire life has sucked. It's not that my family is broken or ruined or some shit like that. It's more like I have a few friends, but there's always been this girl who hated us.

And my luck has gotten progressively worser over the years. My best friend in the entire world, Paige, was reaped when we were fifteen. Incredibly, no one volunteered, which is strange for District 2. Normally the Training Academy would take it upon itself to select someone to compete, but no one did. Not even the bloodthirsty 18 year old girls who want to kill, maim, and get rich and famous and sell their bodies like their parents or grandparents did when they won the Games.

After that, my other friend, Bliss, died in a fire. She was trying to rescue her younger siblings from the flames that devoured her house, and while everyone else survived, Bliss, unfortunately, did not.

This year, my friend Vine has been chosen to volunteer. I don't really care about the Games, though my parents made me train in case I had the sudden desire to volunteer. But Vine does. Well, sort of. You see, Vine comes from a long line of victors in her family. Her mother was a victor, her grandfather, her great-grandfather…so on and so on the list goes. Vine was always different from her family. She never wanted to be in the Games. But the way her family taught her, the only way you'll be safe from the Games is if you volunteer. Then you win, and you're out of the reaping for life. Hypothetically, Vine would've had to volunteer at the age of twelve for this to happen, being that her family's theory of safety from the Games was instilled in her when she was 2, but then she would've had "only" ten years of training. So instead she's volunteering at 18, which is so incredibly stupid, because she has a very low chance of getting reaped, with only seven slips in there.

Sometimes I want to punch her in the face.

It's her last year, and she says it's totally worth the wait. We've all seen numerous of our friends volunteer at 15, 16, 17, and they come back in a casket eventually. But Vine is determined to win. Though I don't particularly care and barely even watch the Games, I know that her determination and fierceness and passion is going to fuel her through the Games, right through to the very end.

"You just wait till next year," Vine would always say with a toss of her blonde hair. "Then we can have houses in the Victor's Village next to each other," I remember that Vine, Bliss and Paige used to tease me for being a year younger than them. I'm still 17 years old, but I was just too smart to be with all the dinky little 5 year olds when school first started. So I was moved up to be with the 6 year olds. That's how I first became friends with Vine, Bliss, and Paige, I guess.

But I also remember this one girl who I left behind when I moved up and tossed aside the 5 year olds way back when. Her name is Elizabeth Kaner. She hates her name more than anything, and insists that everyone call her Lizzy. I don't particularly know why, but she hates me. She has hated me ever since I was told to go with the 6 year olds. Maybe it's because of that, or maybe not, but all I know is that every time I happen to run into her there's this deep burning fire in her eyes that I recognize well: hatred.

I don't really know why she would hate _me _of all people. She used to have plenty of friends when we were four years old. I remember she was always hanging out with the rich girls, the popular girls. But since my family was always middle class, I was never quite in the popular group, and never quite in the poor group where they sacrifice their bread to give to littler kids.

But ever since that day, the other popular girls always looked at me in awe, like I was some strange specimen that had to be admired always or they would be chopped into nothingness. Except Lizzy. Apparently, she had said that I was pathetic and annoying and that I should be back where I belonged. And ever since then, she was ekking it out, friendless, lonely, and homeless, as far as the other girls tell me. Both her parents were murdered mysteriously one night.

Other than me moving up one whole grade, her hatred towards me is inexplainable. But at least someone agrees with me. Vine always says that someday, something bad is going to happen to Lizzy. I always agree with her. This past year, Lizzy has been giving some Peacekeepers a lot of trouble, which makes the entire District whisper about her. It's no secret that Lizzy wants to be a Peacekeeper, but this could jeopardize her chances, and that would be a shame. Or at least, the sympathetic ones say. Everyone would be glad to have her executed, or, better yet, die in the Games. Now there was talk of the reaping being rigged, not like it usually is in District 2, where all its citizens get enough food to last them for a while, and people usually behave. But the Training Academy refused to let a perfectly good Games go to waste—last year's Games had been fantastic, due to a new Head Gamemaker—and instead chose Vine to volunteer when Lizzy is reaped. Just last week, we all saw Lizzy go into the Justice Building, and when she came out, she was all pale and shaking, her shoulders trembling like she was about to cry. I don't know what it was about, but someone allegedly saw someone else stab someone in the gut late one night last month, and Lizzy is the prime suspect.

She kept on snapping at everyone that it wasn't her who stabbed that guy, and that it wasn't her, even, who murdered her parents years ago. It wasn't a surprise to me at all when the trail went cold almost immediately.

If you ignore than Lizzy's undeniable crime-wasted streak and her hatred of everyone in the District, especially me, there is nothing to hate about her. She has straight brown hair that goes down to her ribs, and big brown eyes that look just like a pinwheel of gold. I heard rumors that for years before Lizzy had no money left and became homeless, she went behind the shack with half of the class.

But near-starvation and harsh conditions cannot take away her beauty, which frustrates me. I have brown hair and wide eyes just like her (but mine are green), and bow-shaped lips, freckles, and a huge ass, but that is where my good traits end. I'm pale, and always will be (sometimes Bliss used to call me her "little vampire"), I'm short, I have weird fingers, impossibly curly hair, and enormous feet (Vine still calls me "Bigfoot" for it). My okay traits are these: my friends like me, I have not too big a rack but not too small, and I'm not smart enough not to be a nerd, but smart enough to be a good student.

On the morning of the day my life changed, my first thought was of Bliss, who sacrificed herself for her siblings' safety. Briefly, I wonder, if I will ever have that kind of bravery. Then I think about Paige, who threw herself in front of a twelve year old's way in the Bloodbath to save him. I wonder what it would be like to die for someone. Then I think of Vine, who's volunteering tomorrow. I wonder whether or not she'll volunteer at all, because of who's getting reaped.

**A/N: Hi guys! So I was looking at this new SYOT the other day and I was thinking of an idea for a tribute, when this idea popped into my head. I soon realized that putting this character into an SYOT wouldn't make it as special and as intimate as I wanted, so I just **_**had **_**to make it its own story. It's going to get interesting, promise.**

**Thoughts on the characters?**

**Do I need to improve my writing?**


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